[vmware] nm-applet "No Network Devices Have Been Found" error

[Ryan Gordon]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Reproduction steps:
1) Burn Gusty ISO to a DVD
2) Setup Ubuntu in VM
3) Install VMWare Tools (Note: It still worked after I installed it)
4) Installed Updates
5) Restarted computer
6) No internet connection (The No Network Devices Have Been Found message)

My Ethernet is set to NAT in VMWare

My /var/log/syslog is attached as requested

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

thanks for posting this bug report.

please post the output of

 1. ls -l /sys/class/net/
 2. ls -l /sys/class/net/*/device

... and can you uninstall vmware tools? does it work again after that? did it work before?

Thanks,
 - Alexander

[Ryan Gordon (tikitiki)]

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2007-10-17 14:58 eth0
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2007-10-17 14:58 lo

ls: /sys/class/net/*/device: No such file or directory

I uninstalled vmware tools, restarted, and it's still the same problem. I'm guessing your thinking along the lines of that the /sys/class/net/*/device should exist and there should be folders/files in there.

Ryan

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

yes the driver is buggy then. NM (or HAL) need that device link. Maybe using some other networking variant works with vmware?

what driver is used?

try dmesg | grep eth0

thanks,
 - Alexander

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

and ... what version of vmware are you using? Maybe using the latest fixes this problem?

[David Holmes (exaton)]

Hi,

I am suffering from the same problem. I've had the Gutsy beta running for the past couple of weeks, with VMWare Tools installed, no problem. Today, there were 92 updates (I think), and since I've rebooted, the nm-applet has been telling me that "no network devices have been found". No luck re-building the VMWare Tools kernel modules, including vmxnet.

I have exactly the same output as Ryan Gordon in the /sys/class/net/ directory. No device file (link ?) in either the eth0/ or lo/ folders.

Alexander, I do not know how to answer the question "what driver is used ?". The Restricted Drivers Manager tells me the VMWare Virtual Ethernet Driver is in use.

The VMWare tools re-configuration/re-building script says something about the vmxnet driver vs. the (original ?) pcnet32 one, at the end :

To use the vmxnet driver, restart networking using the following commands:
/etc/init.d/networking stop
rmmod pcnet32
rmmod vmxnet
modprobe vmxnet
/etc/init.d/networking start

These commands do not help. rmmod pcnet32 says that no such module is presently loaded.

Finally, dmesg | grep eth0 gives no results on a freshly rebooted machine. dmesg | grep vmxnet says :

[ 8.752953] vmxnet: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[ 8.753723] VMware vmxnet virtual NIC driver
[ 8.754040] Found vmxnet/PCI at 0x2024, irq 16.

Thanks in advance for any help.

-- David Holmes

[David Holmes (exaton)]

Btw, using the latest version of VMWare (and therefore, presumably, of VMWare Tools) : 6.0.1.

There was definitely a change introduced with the latest version of VMWare Tools, because the hgfs module (Host-Guest File System for shared folders) no longer compiles without a small fix due to a typo in one of their headers.

But the network worked fine until today's big Ubuntu upgrade (I had not upgraded for 4 or 5 days).

[Ryan Gordon (tikitiki)]

dmesg | grep eth0 returns nothing :(

Also yes, I am using the latest version too (6.01) and David Holmes has exactly the same problem as me.

Ryan

[deleted (mdeleted2023)]

As a workaround until the bug is fixed, you can disable roaming mode on the VMware wired adapter and specify dhcp configuration.
That should at least keep you online until a fix released.

[David Holmes (exaton)]

Yes, dropping Roaming Mode (which is meant to switch automatically between available physical network devices, e.g. mixing RJ45 cables and occasional Wi-Fi, right ?) and switching to regular DHCP configuration has restored Internet connectivity on my Gutsy client.

Thank you for this work-around.

From where can we expect further developments ? Is the bug on Ubuntu's side, or on VMWare's ? (Personally inclined to suppose the latter...).

[deleted (mdeleted2023)]

No, This worked fine in the Gutsy beta release iso. It broke on update from there.

[Ryan Maki (ryan.maki)]

I've also experienced this issue running Workstation 6.01 with a clean Gutsy install. My virtual Ethernet card was also set for NAT mode when I built the VMware tools.

The workaround to disable roaming mode does enable the eth0 interface, but it introduces unacceptable delays in launching programs whenever the host network is unreachable or down. If the network card is disconnected clicking the Quit icon in the panel takes 30-45 seconds to produce the shutdown dialog. During this time all other processes appear to hang.

However, I've just updated to Workstation 6.02 and upgraded to the latest "VMware Tools 6.0.2 build-59824 for Linux" and the problem is fixed for me. Now nm-applet detects eth0 and the system is working again.

[Stephen Leavitt (stephen-leavitt)]

I've got to add a "me too" comment here.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10)
$ uname -r
2.6.22-14-generic

VMware Fusion 1.1 (Build: 62573, released 11/12/2007) under Mac OS X 10.5.

I have to disable roaming and enable DHCP in order to get network access to work properly.
NetworkManager pop-up from tray displays "No network devices have been found" greyed out.

I seem to have the same issues in /sys/class/net:

$ ls -l /sys/class/net/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2007-11-14 10:12 eth0
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2007-11-14 10:12 lo
$ ls -l /sys/class/net/*/devices
ls: /sys/class/net/*/devices: No such file or directory

Does anyone have the RPM or tarball for previous versions that did work? I'm thinking VMware Fusion beta or perhaps RC1 might have worked properly, I don't recall at the moment. I'd be happy to try previous drivers and see what works, and diff the source to see what might be different.

If any further information is needed, I'll be happy to help where I can. I am inclined to believe something changed in VMware's vmxnet driver that causes it not to play properly with sysfs, but above and beyond that, I have no idea.

[nixthespam (nixthespam)]

I am completely frustrated at trying to get my networking operational. I used to have the VMWare Player (v 5 something) and I thought, "what the heck, I'll buy VMWare Workstation 6.02 (build 59824) to be able to create virtual machines, etc. I also had Ubuntu 5.10 working great, and networking was fine. Now I have changed so much, I can't even get back to where I was.

I am also getting the "No network devices have been found" from the nm-applet. When I run System->Administration->Network Tools I see only a loopback device listed. There is no "eth0" or other devices. I have an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network connector and I have tried automatic bridging, NATing, and even trying to map the wireless card directly to vmnet0. None of this works.

I have installed vmware tools and had no compiler errors. This is a brand new installation of Ubuntu 7.04 because I couldn't get through all the compile problems on 7.10. Shouldn't a network device exist even before tools is installed?

I have attached a copy of my /var/log/syslog in case anyone can see anything.

Thanks for any help.

[Apple (cpxster)]

Hi guys,
   I'v suffered the same problem as you, but I found that we have a very easy way to fix that bug.
1, execute the vmware-uninstall-tools.pl to uninstall the vmware tool.
2, if you don't want to uninstall the vmtool, you can execute ""vmware-config-tools.pl" and enter N for all questions to disable all not allow the vmtool broken your lib.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Everyone in my office uses VMWare Fusion 1.1 to run Ubuntu ( although a few brave souls have gone native ).

We've all run into this bug one by one. Most have settled for the disable-roaming workaround. I tried this, and couldn't get it to work. I had to manually run: ifconfig eth0 up & dhclient.

I ran a bunch of tests to see if I could figure this out and it looks to me like this is a bug in either the vmxnet driver or the vmware-config-tool.pl script which is supposed to be run after vmware-install-tools.pl.

I posted a new discussion detailing my testing on the VMWare Fusion forum:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/118348?tstart=0

FYI, in addition to the missing 'device' links in /sys/class/net/eth0, the driver link in the corresponding pci device looks incorrect, and there's also a missing "net:eth0" link in the device dir as well. See my VMWare post for the details.

[Gunner_Sr (cdgunn)]

I just had the problem. I just reinstalled the vmware tools and everything is working fine now.

[Jackster (jacksteruk309)]

"We've all run into this bug one by one. Most have settled for the disable-roaming workaround. I tried this, and couldn't get it to work. I had to manually run: ifconfig eth0 up & dhclient. "

I can confirm that I've had this problem in VMware Fusion 1.1 and disabling roaming in Ubuntu's network preferences aswell as running ifconfig eth0 up and dhclient fixed the problem.

[Nick Lawson (vektuz-gmail)]

I'm experiencing this too.

I needed to have roaming mode enabled though, for VPN. I finally got a workaround working by removing the vmxnet module, and only using pcnet32. The rest of the vmware tools functionality (drag and drop onto desktop) seems to still work, although it somehow seems slower.

[Myk Melez (myk-melez)]

It looks like this is still a problem with the latest version of VMWare Fusion (1.1.1) and its tools (7.6.2 build-72241).

[Ben Aston (ben-benjaminaston)]

I experienced this issue with VMWare Workstation (32bit) running on XP, with Ubuntu Gutsy 32bit guest.

An uninstall of vmware tools (sudo vmware-uninstall-tools.pl) followed by a reinstall and a restart of the guest fixed the issue for me (at least for now).

[dingo (indb)]

i want to say " me too"

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not really sure where to assign this. the driver of vmware appear to be the problem.

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD development release - Maverick Meerkat. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/. Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Your Ubuntu version is EOL. Can you reproduce this problem with a supported Ubuntu version? Thank you!

[GregR1 (bluepowder7)]

unlikely - not only have i given up on that version, i've given up on
ubuntu (and linux) altogether. it was FAR too annoying trying to do a
fresh install of 10.04 (which at first update resulted in a
non-booting system), but the critical functions for my type of work
are a hack-job. i'm back with Windows and don't need to get my hands
all messed up.

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 2:48 AM, Thomas Hotz <email address hidden> wrote:
> Your Ubuntu version is EOL. Can you reproduce this problem with a
> supported Ubuntu version? Thank you!
>
> ** Changed in: vmware-package (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/153635
>
> Title:
> [vmware] nm-applet "No Network Devices Have Been Found" error
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--
Greg R.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for vmware-package (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]